Dear friends,
It has been an intense and shaky two weeks for Dechen Chöling. After having quickly reacted to the global crisis and the official instructions by shutting down the centre and benefiting from the governmental help with putting most of our staff on temporary unemployment, we are now looking at how to ensure the survival of Dechen Chöling.
With a group of 10 people, involving Shambhala Europe, the Council of our Association, and Shambhala Global Services, we have been having ongoing calls to analyse our figures and develop possible scenarios for moving forward. It is clear that we will not be able to continue the way we have been running the centre so far. Among other things this will certainly involve reducing our team here to a minimum while trying to keep up with maintenance as much as needed.
It is not possible for us to plan for summer programmes as we are awaiting governmental decisions about travel and events. Although we have not given up hope on having further programmes in the coming months, to be prudent we are now preparing for the worst case scenario of having no further programme revenue this year. This puts us in a very dangerous situation right now, fighting for the survival of our centre. We all want to keep this precious place and will do what we can to keep it up.
The staff living on land is keeping up with practice, lhasangs and maintaining as much as possible the property. We are also exploring online programming as one of our activities. Our Shambhala neighbours are getting involved in exploring new avenues for the future of our centre.
As for all of you to be able to stay in touch with Dechen Chöling right now, we would like to let you know that we will offer two possibilities for you to join us in the coming days:
- We will be holding a sit-a-thon this Sunday, April 19, from 7 to 12am and from 2 to 6pm. It will be held in our Chateau Shrine Room and we will take turns to maintain ongoing practice. Please join us live for some or all of it through the following zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/2026331065
The password for entering the zoom room is: 889878
- Join us for our Wednesday morning lhasang. It will be held live next Wednesday, April 22, at 8.15am. The zoom link to join us is: https://zoom.us/j/2026331065
The password for entering the zoom room is: 889878
We are sending you all our love from Dechen Chöling and will keep you updated as we go along.
Yours in the Vision of the Great Eastern Sun,
Konstanze Brockstedt and the team of Dechen Chöling